pouët.net

Wikipedia's war on the demoscene

category: general [glöplog]
I can't believe how common it is now, to click a link to a wiki article on *anything* and find it gone - sometimes even a link from another wiki article! I was browsing an older site (like 2008-era, not exactly cave paintings here) a while ago for information on electronic music theory. Just about every wiki article linked to on there had been deleted or "merged" with some other article and the content was lost. Incredibly sad and useless! Way to ruin your own resource, dickheads.

How did "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" turn into "wholesale expungers of information and destroyers of the hard work of thousands of people"?

I wrote a lot of the article on Scream Tracker WAY back before you even needed a login to edit articles. I see it's (mostly) survived but who knows for how much longer...

I would never contribute content to wikipedia again. I have more beneficial things I can do with my time.
added on the 2014-09-10 01:13:42 by jmph jmph
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Maybe we should make a backup before they delete it?

Well, all the articles are already "rescued" to web.archive.org, you just need to know the original URL to access them.
Wow, reading through those 'deletion discussions' made me want to punch people. How the hell can the scene be considered 'notable' but not groups like Renaissance or Nooon whom every scener in existence knows about?

On that note, shouldn't the Mindcandy series count as a "notable source"? They were 'officially published' material after all.

I'll bet the volume of data stored in "deletion debates" is orders of magnitude higher than the amount of space dedicated to the articles themselves.
added on the 2014-09-10 03:37:57 by jmph jmph
"Every scener in existence" is the size of a rather small village. Have some perspective.
added on the 2014-09-10 03:47:44 by Gargaj Gargaj
(Did not intend title to be clickbait; was just frustrated when I wrote it. Sorry if that seemed manipulative, it wasn't meant to be.)
added on the 2014-09-10 07:47:44 by trixter trixter
They need all their server space for the multiple page article on Goku!
added on the 2014-09-10 08:52:32 by okkie okkie
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"Every scener in existence" is the size of a rather small village.

Historically, ~40k is rather a mid-sized town. :)

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but not groups like Renaissance or Nooon whom every scener in existence knows about?

I wouldn't count on that. Both groups have not been relevant for 15-20 years now.

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On that note, shouldn't the Mindcandy series count as a "notable source"? They were 'officially published' material after all.

Depends. Playing devil's advocate, it could also be qualified as "dedicated fan project with a website"; Outside sources (magazines, books, academic papers) would be more credible to the uninitiated.
added on the 2014-09-10 09:00:44 by tomaes tomaes
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WP is not a source of evil.
Oh yes, they are. I have been using the term "Wikipedia-Nazis" for quite a while now, and nobody ever asked why, because they all know.
added on the 2014-09-10 09:05:28 by SiR SiR
I assume, as long as humans are involved in the collecting of information there will always be debates on what is worthy to preserve and whats not. Even here it seems to be competition about who knows best.
added on the 2014-09-10 09:06:09 by CONS CONS
Let's just make a demo about it.
added on the 2014-09-10 09:29:37 by Scali Scali
Scali wins the thread! \o/
added on the 2014-09-10 12:59:12 by ok3anos ok3anos
wikis are as irrelevant as diskmags!

(tho when that Aeternus dude starts bitching about the Kewlers page, an Android-based fucktro is in order, so the Play Store can act as a reliable source for the existence as well as typical MO of Kewlers! :P)
Now look what you have done. Now I got tricked into replying at a discussion page at wikipedia. If I miss the next deadline I blame the OP :)
added on the 2014-09-10 17:09:52 by numtek numtek
tbh the demoscene related articles are much more relevant to the scene itself than to outsiders, so dont act if you arent biased.
of course deletionism is a problem on wp but if it wouldnt exist every teenager on the internet would have their own wikipedia page by now - rendering the whole project irrelevant as a source of serious, trusted information.
there should be enough "officially published material" on the scene to justify a general purpose article along with some references, no need to expose single groups or productions (theres better places for that, too).
added on the 2014-09-10 18:46:52 by wysiwtf wysiwtf
well the dude himself is adding albums and bandmember pages of bands noone gives a hoot about, so.. quite double standards there :D
But what about goku :(
added on the 2014-09-10 19:25:52 by okkie okkie
i can think of think of a lot of valid reasons to criticize wikipedia and it can be infuriating how arbitrarily its deletion policy is applied, but don't forget that it's a huge website with a lot of administrators and contributors with different ideas of what should be included. it's the ultimate bureaucracy since everyone has a say and its policies leave a lot of room for interpretation.

not everyone will share your opinion on deletion, so it's perhaps better to create a dedicated demoscene wiki where there is no ambiguous definition of notability about what crap you can put there to stop you, and link to it from the demoscene wikipedia article.
added on the 2014-09-10 19:37:03 by linde linde
there's a demogroup called BITS everyone knows about, still there is no need for a Wikipedia article.
added on the 2014-09-10 20:07:17 by merkur merkur
not to be confused with "List of dragons in games" which is a similarly extensive list of a different enough subject to warrant a page of its own
added on the 2014-09-10 20:08:35 by linde linde
I quitted Wikipedia when I found that they removed a lot of trackers including Impulse Tracker from the list: talk.
Perhaps it's about time to create wiki.scene.org, and just migrate those articles over there?
added on the 2014-09-10 22:26:07 by kusma kusma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Viznut/Deletionist_attacks_against_demoscene_articles

I actually created this table today without having even noticed this thread. I think I'll need to expand the table a little bit with all the new information.
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Perhaps it's about time to create wiki.scene.org, and just migrate those articles over there?


these are exactly my thoughts on the subject.
added on the 2014-09-10 23:36:41 by Defiance Defiance

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